A deeper insight in how and why agile works is the pre-requisite for business agility and the agile organization. Flow thinking has proven to be foundational. But the concept of flow is not an easy concept to master for people that have not experienced it. Rational explanations of flow only go so far. Without intuitive understanding based on experience it may not be easy to mobilize a team or organization into action. By visualizing work, reducing multi-tasking, and removing obstacles, lead times may be drastically reduced leading to better outcomes.

Introducing the Okaloa Flowlab board game-- an exciting new approach to learning how to think about flow through practice and simulation. With Okaloa Flowlab we will perform a series of experiments through board-play style simulations that reflect real work environments. This session provides a quick introduction into what is typically a three-hour interactive class. In order to fit into the 45-minute timeframe, we will provide a “before” vs “after” game play rather than introducing agile policies incrementally, but the end result will be the same.

We first simulate a conventional work environment that reflects a “mechanistic” mindset characterized by a focus on resource efficiency, command and control, and specialist workers, so that participants will viscerally experience which roadblocks need to be overcome. We will then implement a number of agile policies and practices (including pull of work, peer collaboration and limiting the amount of work in process) and observe the results.

This learning session enables attendees to experience first-hand the effect of adopting agile processes in a safe-to-fail simulated environment.

Each team consists of 3-5 people seated around a table with the board (ideally 4 people and 1 person taking up the role of project coordinator).

Participants will discover the power of visualization, limiting work in process and collaboration, and understand the fundamental difference between resource efficiency and flow efficiency.

Come check out this exciting and innovative new way to learn about agility!

Joey Spooner - Making the Change: Going Agile at the Department of Labor

schedule 2 weeks ago

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45 mins

Experience Report

Intermediate

Going agile in the government is easy to say and hard to do. Teams and individuals prefer to stay apart and work on their own for weeks or months at a time. Documentation can quickly become more important than working software. Addressing the demands brought on by a change in administration, policy, or executive direction requires teams and individuals to start working together in order to succeed in their overall mission.

This experience report will discuss the benefits, challenges, and outcomes when implementing Kanban in a traditional waterfall and silo working environment. Techniques for creating a continuous change towards an agile way of working will be shared. Performance data from a two year Kanban initiative at the Department of Labor will be reviewed and discussed. Participants will walk away with a clear understanding of how Kanban can break down silos, improve the agility of a traditional waterfall and silo focused organization, and noticeably improve performance.